Southwest Florida

Hello, hello! Freedom’s Turn just left Key West today, January 9, after a delightful four day stay. The next blog will describe that visit. We proceeded in heading east for an anchorage in a bay inside Big Pine Key. Since we left Fort Meyers, we traveled 200 miles south to Key West in four days. On the enlarged photo of Florida, the end of red line shows about where we are at this writing. We also want to point out the gray line running through the state of Florida. This line indicates an alternative route that people take on the Great Circle route if they want to by-pass the Keys. It is the Okeechobee Waterway. The Okeechobee Waterway is about 150 miles long and is the dividing line between Central and South Florida, from the Gulf side to the Atlantic Ocean. The main river that runs through it is the Calossahatchee River which begins at Fort Myers. The waterway is named for the very large lake located along the route; the Lake Okeechobee. Opening in 1937, this alternative waterway route offers a chance to see rural Florida from small towns to big commercial farms. Many of our fellow “loopers” take this much shorter route due to time constraints or just preference.

The beautiful sunset photo was taken on January 4 while we anchored at Little Shark River in the Everglades. It was the day before we went to Key West; a 75 mile trip south and west. It was kind of eerie going in to anchor; the clouds threatened rain but the sun shone on some dead trees and the trees looked white, as seen in the photo below. And Charlie claims he saw his first shark (with two fins instead of one like the dolphins). We went in to the anchorage and discovered another Mainship trawler like ours only a 430 was in there! (We see Mainships boats about once a month.) The sailboat came in just before I took the photo. I couldn’t resist taking this shot. This Little Shark anchorage is the main gateway into the Everglade National Park; which has 10,000 islands!

It was too bad we could not sit outside at night because the stars were magnificent. At least there have not been any spiders on our boat (due to the salt water) like there are in Michigan!

On January 3 (backtracking now), we traveled to Marco island for one night at Marco River Marina. It was expensive, but felt good to be in a nice place. The Ship’s Store had unusually attractive resort type clothing and I bought my first new outfit on the trip.

One of the drawing points to live in Marco is one of the most beautiful beaches in all of Florida is here; Tiger Tail Beach. There were also pretty homes to be seen all around!

And the condos were everywhere. Now, more than ever, it was evident to us that
the driving force that sustains the Florida economy must be the condo industry: demands for highway building, construction, product distribution, food production, seafood industry, tourism, etc., would have to come from the unbelievable amount of condos we see from the shoreline here.

The main reason we wanted to stop at Marco Island was to meet with our friends Jim and Marie who moved here for the time being from the Pittsburg area. We caught up with family talk and other things over dinner; we had not seen them for five years. Jim used to work with Charlie for Perkin-Elmer.

Below is a photo of what our upper helm looks like while we are cruising; me usually writing with books and pamphlets everywhere, Charlie navigating with his charts in neat and perfect piles.

At this anchorage, we had our first experience with the teeny tiny bugs called “no-see-ums.” Charlie had his cigar earlier than later because the bugs were staring to bite as the daylight hours left.

We closed everything up but needed air to sleep so we sprayed our portholes with bug spray. We cooked a simple dinner on our one burner Coleman stove so we would not make any extra noise with the generator running. It was so calm and peaceful; just the noises of nature. We felt really isolated from the world here because we could not receive any phone signal or get out on the internet! Oh my! By the way, to follow the weather while cruising, we frequently get out our regular road maps out as we listen to the marine radio forecasts because they talk about weather by counties frequently and otherwise we would not have a clue what county we are in!

The last photo is our early morning view of the sunrise at our Little Shark Anchorage.

The beautiful as well as eccentric Key West is beckoning us to come on over for a little visit. And so we did. Key West here we come.

Sincerely, Linda and Charlie